Yung Pueblo on Signs Your Relationship Will Last

[Speech ] Today I bring to you a man many of you already know. His name is Yong Pueblo, the number one New York Times bestselling author of Lighter and the Inward Trilogy and a world-renowned voice on self-healing, creating healthy relationships and developing mindfulness. He has sold over 1.5 million books and has millions of followers and his new book How to Love Better delivers his vision for a path to deeper connection. through growth, kindness, and compassion. I know that you are going to get so much out of this conversation. I joked with Diego Young Pueblo that I asked him nothing but hard questions in this conversation, and he really rose to it in a beautiful way, bringing his depth of experience, his mindfulness practice to Dating, relationships, and all the kinds of challenges that our love lives bring up. So, I know you're really going to love this. And for everyone who does love this, there's something I know you will have in common, and that is that you are someone who values emotional peace. You are someone who is looking to develop a better relationship with yourself. You are someone who wants to be less anxious out there in the world. You're someone who wants to approach things in a more intentional way where you don't sabotage yourself with old patterns, behaviours that have maybe been with you your whole life and consistently get in the way of you, A, being happy and peaceful, and B, getting the life you want or the person you want. And if that is you, then I want you to join me in October of this year on the Matthew Hussey Weekend Retreat. on the 18th and 19th of October. It's happening in Miami, but if you can't make it in person, we have virtual tickets as well. And this is a really amazing time to get a ticket because we still have our Early Bird special available. This is the most discounted the tickets will be for the entire year. So do not wait. Go to mHretreat.com and get your ticket. I hope you join us in person, 'cause it's gonna be so great to see so many of you in Miami at this beautiful convention center that we're doing it at. But if you can make it virtually, that's great too. I know we're gonna have people are traveling from all over the world to get there, but people are also gonna be tuning in from all over the world to do this virtually. If your self-growth, your healing, and your goals in life are more important to you now than ever, this is a very, very important weekend for you to carve out for yourself. All right, mhrtrait.com is the link. Grab your ticket. And now, I present to you, young Pueblo. I have so many questions.

Yeah, let's jam.

So, young Pueblo, is your writing name. Diego Perez is your name in everyday life. I'm so excited to have you here. And I have lots of questions for you. I have questions relating to single life, relational life, your new book, How to Love Better, addresses both. and I want to start by asking you what you feel is the biggest mistake that people are making single right now. People who are looking for love, who desperately want to find love. It is so important to them and they are finding it incredibly challenging. What do you see from your vantage point as someone who's been married a long time is the biggest mistake that single people are making at present?

I think it's understanding and fully accepting that there's no perfect satisfaction. When you're coming across another individual, they are going to enter like any human being everywhere in the world. When you bring people together, they will come in with their perceptions that are driven by their past emotions, by the old hurt that they carry, you know, whether it's trauma or not, but they're coming in with conditioning. and that conditioning makes it so that even if you have the deepest chemistry, such a magnetic connection, there are still going to be challenging moments. And you can't expect, even though society makes us think that everything should just be easy and like, you know, we live in this DoorDash, Uber society where everything is just built to make your life as easy as possible. Relationships are not going to be like that. Relationships are a journey where you have to accept that there are going to be ups and downs. And that's part of the growth process. So, I think expecting this perfect constant satisfaction, constant excitement, I think ruins the potential to build a lot of beautiful relationships.

So, what do you make of that line that you hear all the time? If it's right, it will be easy. Which you hear from- that sounds wrong.

Yeah, it sounds- no, it doesn't sound- you know, I feel like even in my own relationship with my wife, when we got together, the magnetism was there, but it was not easy. It was never easy from the beginning. It was actually, actually rather tumultuous. And I have this piece that I wrote years ago about, you know, two people coming together and how the unspoken story is often that it's difficult in the beginning. It's not just this, like, perfect stream of bliss. And I think we have to be okay with that because it's ultimately the relationship you build. It's not just going to be like, you know, my relationship is not going to fix every aspect of my life.

What was for you and feel free only to go into areas that you feel comfortable, but what made it tumultuous for you in those stages? I'm wondering what people can learn from that because there are a lot of people who are watching or listening to this right now who feel like they cycle from one tumultuous relationship to another. And maybe they're wondering, is it me? Do I keep picking people who bring chaos or pain into my life? Is it a combination of the two? You know, in a sense, there's hope in your story that a relationship that started in a tumultuous way resulted in a happy, peaceful relationship. And you say in your book that it's by no means perfect, but it's in a completely different state than it was then.

Totally.

So what did tumultuous mean for you?

Well, one of the main aspects is that we got together very young, and we're talking a very sort of, like, pre-wellness world, right? Where self-love wasn't even part of the sort of global conversation. Healing yourself, you know, therapy still was something that felt, like, far away. I didn't know anybody who meditated back then, so my wife and I, we got together when she was 18 and I was 19 and in college. And between the two of us, there was, like, very little emotional maturity, zero self-awareness like, we spent the first six years of our relationship in what felt like a giant blame game, where whenever I didn't feel good, my mind would try to find a reason as to why it was her fault, and she would do the same to me. And it was, you know, but it was just this lack of. you know, totally being unconscious of how our movements of our emotions are affecting the logic in the mind. And it was such a drastic change when we started meditating and working on ourselves as individuals. When we started working on developing our own awareness, our own non-reaction, our own compassion, that we started seeing, oh, this is helping me have a little more patience with you. And it's helping me see that my mind is often playing tricks on me, trying to blame you when there is no blame. I just need to take accountability for how I feel.

Do you feel that you got lucky in a sense that you had someone by your side who was equally motivated to meditate? Because you could have been that person in this one-sided situation where you're growing and you're discovering more stability and equanimity. control over your emotions, but you're with someone who, you know, isn't as proactive. What do you say to that? And what do you say to people who say, like, I'm in a relationship and I'm doing that work, but my partner isn't?

Yeah, I think it's very common that different minds need different tools. And I think some people find reflection in art, in nature, some through therapy, some through meditating, and they start developing their emotional skill set in their own way. I do feel incredibly fortunate. It feels like I won the lottery, you know, that both my wife and I took to this particular style of meditating, vipassana meditation, and we both found it to be so nourishing, like in such a profound and so transformative. You know, I did my first course in September of 2012, She did her first course in March of 2013. And, you know, the... Was she inspired.

By what she saw as being the result you got?

Or did she just... She was inspired from even before I went, because a friend of ours that we went to college with, he sent us an email. And this was someone who was, you know, one of my still to this day, one of my best friends, where he wrote to us about love, compassion, and goodwill. And like, these are big things to talk about, especially when we were, you know, I was reading this when I was, like, 23 at the time, and I almost didn't believe my friend Sam when he wrote that email. And I was like, what are you talking about? And. But it also hit me in a moment where I was trying to make a lot of changes in my life, and. And I signed up, and I was like, well, let me see if this is something for me as well. And my wife was really interested at the time, but she was working as a scientist, so. her schedule was a little more strict, so she had to wait a little bit to be able to go to the course as well. But after that, the changes were very gradual. Like at first it was just tiny little more bits of compassion, little bits of patience, and then we started seeing that, you know, over time, over the years, like more and more harmony started entering the relationship because we were able to build that inner resilience to feel our own emotions, and understand, you know, how to not project onto each other.

What would be like a tangible example of that?

I think the granted there are absolutely going to be times where, you know, one person makes a mistake and you have to apologize and take accountability. But when my wife and I, what we started noticing was, you know, at the very beginning of the pandemic, we're living in our, you know, one bedroom apartment. in New York City and we started seeing that all these little arguments were coming up. And a lot of time, the arguments weren't really about anything substantial. What was actually happening was a lack of communication about how we felt as we were moving through the day. So I think the most tangible example is we started realizing that it would benefit us to, as we wake up to just tell each other how we feel. you know, like, do I feel good today? I feel strong, I feel tired, I feel lethargic, you know, whatever it is that's moving through you. And that little bit of information has been so helpful because I know how I feel and I know how she feels. And if she needs more support that day, I can step up and give more support. And we started practicing this and then it became this sort of habit of like telling each other how we feel in the morning, then telling each other sometime in the mid-afternoon. And it's not some like formal sit down. It's not like a formal thing like that. It's much more informal. And in passing, we're just telling each other like, Whoa, like I feel, you know, my mind feels tense. But knowing that helps the person who feels heavy not fall into these sort of, you know, almost like jumping through hoops to figure out, because the mind does not want to take responsibility for itself. It wants to figure out how is this your fault? And we had this beautiful example a few years later after we started practicing that, where I was sitting in, we had moved to, you know, to Western Mass, to the home we live in now, and I was working on my laptop in the kitchen and my wife was working in the living room. And she, you know, we hadn't talked to each other for maybe like two, three hours. She comes in laughing and she's like, I just spent the last three hours trying to figure out how I can make this tension your fault. And I just kept going, Further back in time, further back in time, trying to rehash old arguments to see how I can, you know, start a fight.

Like the tension she was feeling inside. So you were just working.

I was on my own.

You were on a different planet doing your thing.

I was being a good boy, working, you know, probably writing, clarity and connection. And what was amazing was her enacting her own self-awareness, taking accountability for her own emotions. and then coming and sharing that with me. And I was like, you know, in that moment, it's like, wow, I do the same thing all the time trying to figure out how to, you know, start an unnecessary argument simply from a lack of awareness.

So what would have been the thought in that situation? If you were the one starting the argument or if you want to speak for your wife, if she was the one starting the argument in that situation, what would have been the thought going through her head? Would it be he's been quiet for 2 hours, so clearly he's like, there's something wrong with him right now or he's mad at me? me and why is he mad at me? Or like, what would be an example thought that maybe cross her mind or if you want to put you in those shoes would have crossed yours?

-I think, you know, these little arguments that we would have often, like sometimes if, you know, my wife is a very organized person and whenever I would have to cancel something, like cancel a doctor's appointment and reschedule it, it just triggers her. She just doesn't like it. So, trying to find something sort of insubstantial that may have been out of our control and trying to find a reason to be upset about it. But what was interesting was that she was seeing how she looked for something current, there was nothing there, so she started looking into the past to see what can I use to fuel this tension in my mind.

So, for her, it wasn't even that there was necessarily a conscious kind of thing to latch onto. She was just feeling a base level of anxiety or irritability or something. And then she was looking for something to fixate on.

Exactly. To keep, to literally fuel it, to keep that emotion growing and becoming bigger. And that's something that meditating has made really clear, is that emotions like to grow. So they try to grab on things to grow.

What do you say, you know, in let's say a dating situation where you are speaking with someone, you're having, maybe you've been on some dates, you really like this person, you've got the impression so far that they like you. Communication has been very consistent. But then all of a sudden, two days elapse and they don't reach out very much. You know, maybe you get a text or something, but it's not, you've been speaking on the phone every day or you've felt close to this person, then all of a sudden their communication shifts. And there's that thought that goes through your mind, oh my God, am I gonna get hurt here?

Yeah.

They don't like me as much as I thought. They don't like me as much as I like them. I better start retreating here because I'm gonna get burned and I need to preempt that punch by basically delivering it to myself before they can. Or for some people, that makes them mad. Why did they change up their communication? Now, when I speak to them, I'm gonna be pretty Frosty and passive aggressive and not going to be able to be myself. Of course. Some of those thoughts can pertain to situations in our life where that's been true and where someone's communication changing did mean that they weren't interested and that we were gonna get hurt. Some of it might be coming from a genuine intuition about this situation. You know, maybe we're in the moment, something has changed in that person and we're picking up on it and we don't wanna be blind to it. So, when those thoughts arise for people and they feel so close to it, that they can't pass out what's history, what's relevant, what's real, what's a good amount of protecting myself, what is me self-sabotaging now? What do you say to the tools that you have learned? How would you apply them to that situation in early dating?

I think one of the key tools is that you have to slow yourself down. Like when you feel that impulsiveness, when you feel that survival mode trying to waken itself up, like the way you were mentioning, like I have to pull away or be frosty or, you know, protect myself in some manner. That's the survival mode trying to defend you from any more emotional harm. But I think you have to really ask yourself, like, is this reaction how I genuinely want to show up or is this me just trying to defend myself from something that may not even be attacking me? So one of the main ways to stop that immediate reaction because a reaction is just your past trying to recreate itself in the present. What you want to do is just slow down and check in. Like, is this actually real or is this genuinely the way that I want to show up? Or is there some other skillful method that I can utilize in this moment?

And to an extent, there's a kind of logic to that, right? There's a rationality to that. There's a working through it in a systematic way with logic. But sometimes in those moments, we feel like our body has just been taken over. You know, we become anxiety. We become fear and we just, it's in our body. And so anyone can say anything to us in that moment. moment. And it's like we can't hear it, we become blind. It's like that, you know, in a movie it would be like the tinnitus ringing in our ears would happen at that moment. And all we can experience is how anxious we are. What do you say to people who are in that kind of full body takeover in that moment? Which I'm sure I know I felt it in arguments before with my partner, where I'm like, I can't seem to see straight. And whatever, even there's like this quiet voice... I don't know, did you ever watch Get Out? The film Get Out? There's that moment where they sink down to a level where they're looking up, looking at themselves. I feel like I'm that voice of reason in me is that part that's like right down there in the depths, looking up at my eyeballs looking out onto the world, reacting.

Right.

But it can't be heard because the only thing that I'm experiencing is this full takeover of emotion. What's the tool that you use and your wife uses in that moment?

Yeah, I think... So there's one thing you have to really try to understand, and it's very difficult because so much of that old impulsive emotional reaction just happens lightning fast. where it does feel like you don't have a choice. But if you really want to be happy, you have to train the mind. You have to literally train the mind because otherwise all the mind knows is reaction. All the mind knows is defensiveness. It just will repeat the past over and over again. It'll keep you in survival mode and that will end up, you know, slowing down the development of connections. But training yourself to pause so that you can just you know, in those moments, if you're so heated, you're in an argument, all you want to spew is something negative that actually won't help, that will just make the argument worse. Pause, slow down, take a break. There, I remember often that there were times where, you know, I'm sure you've had these moments, too, where you're in an argument with your partner, and even though it's heated, it's not constant screaming or anything like that. It's like, you're talking, but there are also pauses in that moment. And I feel like though having those valuable, like, if we're talking seriously for an hour or two hours about whatever the argument may be, those moments when we're slowing down, even in, in the midst of the argument, help you regain yourself. Because I remember those moments, you know, when we would have more arguments more often in the past, even in those moments, I would know, I'm like, Do I want to, is the next thing I want to say, is that just going to make things worse? Or am I trying to help us right now? Am I trying to like, like this is so exhausting, let's find resolution. And part of that was a lack of sort of skill around not understanding that, you know, we were treating arguments like battles. And as soon as we switched the framework and started treating arguments as a place where we can understand each other better, where we can develop our connection better. That just changed everything.

There's something that you wrote about in your book that relates to what you just said, which is, you know, it's kind of to do with the energy that we bring to the argument, to the dispute. And one of the things you talk about is this idea of. And I forget how you phrase it, but the essence was seeing your partner as someone that at the core is good, that you can trust. Yeah.

They're not your enemy.

They're not your enemy.

Yeah.

Now that I. I fundamentally believe in that.

Yeah.

And I know that that has helped me in many, many situations with Audrey, my wife.

Yeah.

And for her, too, to, to really connect with the idea that I married this person because.

Yeah.

Of who they are and who they are is good.

Yeah.

They are my partner. They are my best friend. But it is also really hard to reach that point with a person. I it. That assumes a deep, deep Baseline.

Yeah.

Of ascribing good intention to this person. And that is actually a really hard baseline to reach with a person.

Yeah, and I think this is like, and I'm noticing the way that we're talking about this, there's like two different arcs of understanding where it's expecting it to be fluid and to just work. as opposed to understanding that relationships are about gradual development, like literally gradually developing the skill of switching yourself over from seeing an argument as a battle to seeing it as understanding like that, that was that movement was super choppy for us. Like, yes, when Sarah and I would get into an argument, you know, I would want to win. And, you know, even though there were times where I understood, I'm like, oh, this is unproductive. it still took slowing down repetition. And that's really what the mind requires, is repetition. So in the attempt putting effort to slow down, remind myself, okay, actually, this is an opportunity for me to understand her better. Like, I think I see things from, you know, I see my understanding of the situation, but it would help me greatly if I can see things from her understanding. So I think realizing that, you know, you and I, we, we speak to people and we give them a lot of advice, but to put advice into practice and to take these things, it's not going to be like an instant, you know, it's just going to take gradual repetition for you to like, you know, to build peace, to build harmony, to build better communication. And I think when we accepted the choppiness of it's like, you know, we, like our relationship was so turbulent, and then all of a sudden it slowly started becoming more harmonious. But it wasn't a perfect line. It was like, you know, tons of ups and downs on the way to a more harmonious relationship.

Well, a lot of people have been in situations before where someone didn't have their best interests at heart.

Yeah, for sure.

And they were trying in good faith with someone who was not a great teammate.

Totally.

And it makes it really hard the next time round for them to almost rediscover that place inside themselves that can say, I am going to assume the best. I am going to assume that we're both playing by the same set of rules. And deep beneath all of this argument is a bed of compassion and kindness, as you talk about in, in your book. And I, I wonder what you say to people who, and I, I think I put myself in this category of, you know, a significant amount of betrayal in life, a significant amount of not being able to trust that what someone was telling me was the truth or, you know, that there wasn't some kind of agenda at the heart of it. And that that then made it very difficult for me to trust in new relationships. And this relationship has been a very corrective relationship for me in that respect, but what What do you say to people who find themselves really finding it hard to trust that if they kind of do that trustful based on the compassion and the kindness of the other person, and they're not actually sure that that's there or their past experience has taught them that it's not safe to do that.

Yeah, there's two things. I mean, one is the sort of external sign of where a relationship's going. Like if you're consistently going from one down moment to another down moment, to another down moment, something's wrong, right? Relationships are ups and downs. They're not perfect ups, but if they're just going down, down, down, down, down, like something's really not okay. So you have to assess if this relationship is right for you. The other aspect of it is that often when we are in relationships that are, you know, harmful, hurtful, unproductive, that, you know, the two people are just mismatched and there isn't that that foundation for safety and security and love and the conducive qualities of relationships. Then what ends up happening is that you start building boundaries. You eventually break up with the person, but those boundaries, they can become walls. They can become walls that stop you from connecting with another person, just like you were saying, where you had to defend yourself. You had to be able to create your own space of safety But then are you letting people in after that? Because not everyone's out to get you, not everyone's trying to harm you. There are going to be people like, even if you're not perfectly healed, you can still find a very healthy relationship and grow together alongside each other. So I think intentionally trying to, you know, once you see signs of safety and security where, you know, you can check with your own nervous system and see like, am I calm? Am I calm around this person? not only are their actions matching up with their words, but is their energy also helping me feel a sense of, you know, that I can open up and be vulnerable. Once you start seeing signs of that, then you have to really check in with yourself and see, like, am I letting them in?

How I'd love for you to apply the. The very conscious and intentional approach that you're talking about to those stages of dating where we want to feel safe. where we want our nervous system to feel calm in the ways that you just described.

Yeah.

But for whatever reason, it doesn't yet. And I think one of the really tricky things is that sometimes it doesn't, because we are out there doing this inherently vulnerable.

Yeah. Thing.

Yeah. And the idea, especially if we've had our heart broken in the past or if we've faced a lot of disappointments, the idea of putting ourselves back out there again. yeah. Is intensely vulnerable. It's so vulnerable that a lot of people can go on a date and have a really great time. Yeah. And then feel completely messed up by the fact that the attention fell off after that date and that it didn't go anywhere after that, despite getting their hopes up again. And then that makes them. That only compounds their anxiety the next time around going, oh, my God, I like this person. Is this going to hurt all over again? So there's a safety that people seek simply because they feel they've put themselves in a very vulnerable position. And then there's the reality of being around someone whose behavior and lack of consistency and lack of intention or straight up manipulation is giving us good reason to have a jacked up nervous system. So for people trying to navigate that, How would you apply this very conscious approach to the first week, the first five weeks of dating, where you're starting to like someone and you're trying to get the balance right between protecting yourself and letting the walls down enough that something can actually happen?

Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a few different things too there where, I mean, one, I feel like if you go on a date and there's, you know, there's energy there, there's excitement, there's connection or signs of connection, but then there's no follow-through by the other person. And if that follow-through, you know, lack of follow-through creates a giant reaction inside of you, then you're coming into it with too much attachment, right? It's like one moment, like one moment. And it's, it's, you find it so often where as in the date itself. As in the date itself.

It's just one date.

It's one date that didn't work out. But if you're putting like, you know, all your chips in one bag and it's like you're really sort of expecting happiness to come from this one thing, then I think it points a signal back to yourself where, you know, whether single or not, whether in a relationship or not, you ultimately have to activate your own happiness. And that's something that's pretty foundational and fundamental because someone can try to love you, have so much good will towards you, but if your perception and your own reaction that's happening in your mind, that can totally block you from receiving. So when we're trying to, you know, the way we approach dating, it has to be with a bit less attachment and just understanding that like you can't really take it personal. If there's nothing there, there's nothing there. You know, if there was, you know, you spent an exciting hour or so with someone and and there was no follow through on their part, that's okay. You know, you move on to whatever's next. The other end is that as a relationship does start developing, I think what you want is seeing that words and actions continue matching up and that there's the continuity of clarity where, like, you both know where you stand, you know where you want this to go, you know that there's I think that I had this interesting moment where, and it was pretty life-changing. My wife, like when we were young, even back then, she was quite a serious individual and we were friends for about three months before we started dating. And I realized that I had feelings for her. And it was in a funny way where, you know, I was fine with being friends, but when I saw that there were other guys trying to date her, My insides like curled up and it was like, no way, I need to stop this. And I was like, wait, what's going on? You know, so it took me like a week or so to be like, oh, I like her. I really like her and I want to be with her. And I let her know that I had these feelings for her. And, you know, I went to her room and she told me, I need to think. You know, I tell her I like her, I pour my heart out. She's like, I need to think. So she sends me off, I go out, And then she texts me like three hours later to come back to the dorm room and she comes to my room this time and she the first thing that she tells me. She's like, what are you thinking long term? And I was like, what?

Said nothing had happened between you romantically at this stage.

Not zero.

You've been friends for how long? Like a couple months. Three months.

Three months. Like nothing, you know, like never shared anything more than a hug and she She comes back to me with like, what are you thinking long term? And in my mind, I'm like, what? I'm like, I dodged the question one. Like, you know, I'm just like, do you even like me? You know, like I haven't heard any response from her. The first thing that she offers is, is her wanting clarity? And she tells me, you know, to this day, she's like, it would have been really hard for me to just burn a friendship that was important to me to know, you know, if this was gonna be real. and it was going to turn into something, then she would happily go into it. But it was so interesting that that moment of clarity, even though I barely was able to accept that, I think it was helpful for the both of us because I knew she was all in.

So I'm curious, would you dare to give that as advice to someone? Because for you in that situation, there was something, it suggested a high degree of intentionality on her part, a thoughtfulness, Even the fact that she's like, you know, we have a friendship and I wouldn't risk it for something that, you know, felt flippant or you didn't feel the same way. But, you know, many people would use that piece of advice and the person on the other end would be like, Wait, what? Like, would you give that as advice?

It made sense in the context that we were in because we had a strong friendship and there was like a strong magnetism there between us just with being friends. I do think though, like when you're in your 30s or late 20s or you know, wherever, as you're getting older in life, you like I've seen a bunch of different things happen with friends where people have gotten married but they never had the conversation about whether they wanted to have kids or not. And then they had the conversation pretty late and then ended up breaking up because they wanted different things. But these are, you know, you want to be honest. I think relationships are just built on honesty and everything is highly situational, but you developing, you know, being forward about the clarity of, I do want to have a relationship with you. Are you interested in having one with me? Nothing wrong with that. And then as it grows, like, you know, I do, I'm, I am interested in having kids. But just having these little sort of moments where you put forward your honesty and see if the other person also wants to journey in the same direction, I think it's better sooner than later.

What is the right way for people to do that though, linguistically, tonally, timing wise? Because it's almost, you know, what's fascinating about that story, right? Is that you yourself were not in touch with how you felt about her in that moment. In a sense, your romantic interest was brought to your attention by seeing external.

Circumstances, seeing what was happening with her.

And other people who were showing interest. Which, by the way, even though this is why I think dating is such a can of worms for people, because it's like you could listen to that and it obviously, it could seem at least to legitimize advice that tells you to, you know, make them a little jealous. Like, do so. Tell a story or two that, like, shows people are interested in you or makes them a little jealous because, you know, it, it will wake them up. It will put a little time pressure on the situation. But, but I think what's this is why I find fascinating about so, so much of this stuff is that there is a truth there. There is a truth. I've been in that situation before where I'm like, oh, I better Like, I better get a move on here.

Now or never, yeah.

Yeah. And sometimes that's precipitated, you know, there are contexts in which that would be precipitated by something very organic. And you could see a context where it's precipitated by someone sort of engineering it more.

Totally. And it's so interesting that you bring in that perspective because immediately in my mind is she was not, she's not that type of person at all. She's like, she's moving through life very organically. She also saw, you know, I was like, I think talking to other people at the time and like she didn't think that there was anything ever going to that was going to happen between us. So and to me, it's like you don't want to play games. Like I think playing games like that where you're like trying to architect a situation that feels like a distant type of manipulation and you don't want to start a relationship like that. That just sounds like, you know, you want to you want to build on the bedrock of honesty. and even in the moments where you have to like tell a truth that is very hard to deliver, but with as much compassion as possible, and then you have arguments about telling that truth and, you know, having to find resolution, having to find forgiveness, having to see, you know, how you're going to move forward together. Like my wife and I have had multiple of these moments where we have to tell each other the truth, but it just You know, once we can forgive each other, we come closer together. And I think that's, you want to start like that from beginning to end?

I 100% agree. For me, what it brings up is that there has to be, there was something organic to that situation because your wife was, it sounds like the person, Sarah is your wife's name. Yes. It was Sarah's nature in that moment not to necessarily wait around for you romantically or to, to be out there in the world where things could happen. And that was something you picked up on simply by being in her orbit, by being in her world. And I think a lot of games substitute for real value. They substitute for genuine forward momentum in your own life. Instead of being the train that is leaving the station at some point. You pretend to be the train that's leaving the station at some point. And I think just that focus on, none of us should be playing games, but I think it's always worth asking, what is the thing that when those games get engineered by people, what is the thing they're actually getting at? And what they're getting at is A genuine connection to our value. A genuine connection to a life that's going somewhere. I think from everything it sounds like when she came to you and said, what's the long-term intention? What I don't hear from that, and maybe I'm projecting now, but what doesn't come across is any sense of desperation on her part. What doesn't come across is a person who's highly anxious about what you're gonna say next, but a person who's already weighed up in her mind that you are an interesting person in her life that she is developing some feelings for. And is it worth her time to continue to have those feelings develop?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You're making me want to go talk to her and ask her more about what happened in that three hour period because she sent me away. You know, like I told her I liked her and had feelings for her. And she was like, I need space. I need to think. And I think that it's just so interesting because I remember that moment where she asked if what I was thinking long term and there wasn't like fear or anything. I think she just found enough interest in her, in me, that there could be something that we could build together.

What did you think? Leave me a comment below. Let me know. And by the way, part two of this interview is coming up next in the next few days. So don't forget to like this video, subscribe to this channel and hit the notification bell so that as soon as part two drops, you get notified. And while you're here, make sure you go to mHretreat.com and grab your early bird ticket. either an actual physical seat to be in Miami or a virtual ticket so that you can be with us at my live weekend retreat in October on the 18th and 19th. That link again is mhretreat.com I can't wait to see you there and I will see you in part two of the young Pueblo interview.